My name is Rick Rosio and I am a Washington State Citizen and an HIV Patient. I am also the program director of Washington’s Veterans for Compassionate Care, a program driven health care delivery clinic model that seeks approval to provide Whole Plant Botanical Cannabis therapy to the Warfighter communities.

The state has issued a new mandate in response to the passage of I-502 calling for all Washington Citizens who are medical patients using Cannabis as a therapy, to follow an entirely new framework for accessing Whole Plant Botanical Cannabis.

After careful review of the proposed amendments to the medical cannabis program of Washington State, we have concluded the proposed changes by the advisory group to the LCBD to merge the medical cannabis program into I-502 regulations is harmful and unacceptable to Washington Citizen/Patients.

We feel this move has the potential to deeply disadvantage the entire spectrum of the vulnerable disabilities communities.

This would effectively end the ability of Washington Citizen/Patients to have whole plant botanical cannabis substance access and make all other vulnerable patient loads exposed to new and unexpected regimes in finding the same type of palpable relief to many of the maladies that these patients have been unable to meet with traditional pharmaceuticals.

The cannabis benefit

The medical literature is full of historical evidence proving that Cannabis is indeed a very significant adjunct to wellness care, having been a “Traditional” substance offered in the medical pharmacopeia for many, many years before the unscientific ugly stain of Prohibition took it out.

It is this ideal of Wellness delivered through a whole plant botanical substance that is the Human Right of every Citizen within the Public Commons! The Cannabis Hemp Plant is a long standing member of the Public Commons, with ancient ties to human engagement for a myriad of uses. As such, it would be Anti-Human to keep the body politic itself out of the Public Commons, so why are we trying to keep a plant that has been a member of that same Public Commons longer than even we humans, when its benefits to humanity are so well enshrined throughout history.

We are Washington Citizens, therefore harken to our own cultural underpinnings of being “Pioneers”… hearty self-directed individuals hell-bent on bringing about a life worth living.

And that is the core of the message we want to bring today, that we are still “Pioneers” attempting to carry on our unique states’ mandate to craft lives worth living for each and every one of our Washington Citizens … for at some point, we will all be patients and deserving of the quality of experience that this spirit of what it means to be a Washington Citizen is all about.

Good compassionate care brought about in the most nurturing and hospitable form it can be delivered in – that is where and why Cannabis Therapy shines so bright, it has all those characteristics that make life worth living.

Affordable medicine

The Washington Medical Cannabis Program has produced a great number of benefits to our citizen/patients.

We have seen many of these vulnerable citizen/patient groups find relief in their increasing economic burdens brought about by an economic climate that has pushed many into situations where they can no longer afford any other option to being able to grow their own Whole Plant Botanical Cannabis and find uses for it that traditional medical treatments are simply not able to deliver.

Therefore, we cannot allow the complete eradication of the Medical Cannabis Program because of the unique abilities of the Cannabis Hemp Plant to meet the needs of our states most vulnerable. The sick and dying need special attention, those with life threatening conditions need specialized treatments, the economically depressed have special needs that only direct personal access to the plant can deliver.

There is a clear mandate for the state to regulate this segment and indeed bringing the benefits of the plant to the larger medical community is a valid long term strategy. The state feels a need to craft a regulatory environment to allow for the roll-out of the I-502 program, making a recreational component of this plant available by taking away the entirety of the existing Medical Cannabis Program.

One does NOT have to mean extinguishing the other.

The people voted for it … in 1998

The state can certainly produce a regulatory system to support a flourishing recreational model, while also crafting a similar regulatory scheme allowing for smart rational parameters that continue to allow for Washington Citizen/Patients who voted for the right to have Whole Plant Botanical Cannabis to continue on a redrawn blueprint for promoting wellness for our own states Citizen/Patients.

The citizens of this state have rights and now, one of them is to Whole Plant Botanical Cannabis and we urge our elected officials to recognize that we the Citizen/Patients have spoken clearly about this issue. The many benefits those that grow are able to achieve should not be totally taken away. The collective garden model is a necessary adjunct for those sick and injured who are not able to garden for themselves.

Now, with the state’s input at this crucial time, a new set of operating protocols can be established allowing for a more specified system that patients can use to guide them in pursuit of a self-directed healthcare regime.

What advances such a model is a regulatory system that affirms the Washington citizens’ rights to behavior consistent with the law of the state. This logically continues to provide for each citizen to care for themselves, with remade limits, either through a personal grow or a reworked collective garden model.

We’ll vote again …

The ideal of providing access point protection and regulation under Washington law is simply a smart and sensible control factor, one that could aid and assist during a transitional period to a full service commercial market place.

We vote, our friends and family members vote …

We will support the right of Washington State Citizen/Patients in keeping to the spirit of the existing medical cannabis program protocols while formulating new operating guidelines that enshrine these originating principles. We will campaign insuring that Washington will not return to a time of prohibitionist attitudes where the sick and suffering live in fear without personal access.